Schubert Song Cycle Discography

Instructions
On the discography page, you may select the detail that you wish to view. Your instructions are executed each time you press the 'Update Options' button, and details of your selections are remembered, so you can revise some of your selections, and try again. The URL that gets generated from your selections, which can be seen in the address bar of your browser, can be saved as a favourite, or used in links from your website. The links to cycle discographies in the menu bars on this website work in this manner.

Once onto the discography page, you can change the details that you wish to view by changing the controls at the top of the page. These are of three types, which are described below: Each performance in the results table has a 'details' link that will take you to a page with full details of that performance. In addition to the information in the results table, the performance details page has various notes, SPARS codes, information about live or Mono recordings, and a listing of all known recordings of the performance, with label, media and numbers, and, in some cases, pictures. If you click on a picture of a recording, a new window will normally open with a larger picture (if we have one!).

Display Options

There are 4 check boxes to enable or disable parts of the display. Each option will apply when the 'Update Options' button is pressed if the check box is checked. The display Options are:
  • Show DB Stats. This option displays statistics about the discography database including version information, the last date it was updated, and the number of entries for each cycle, singers and accompanists.
  • Abbreviate. This option abbreviates the cycle, category, voice and instrument information in the result table, so that they take up less room. The meanings of the abbreviations are given on the Abbreviations page.
  • Show Performance Notes. This option displays an extra column in the results table with performance notes. These give the date and place of the recording, if known, plus other pertinent information that does not fit anywhere else.
  • Show Track Timings. This option displays extra columns in the results table with individual track timings.

Filters

There are 6 list boxes to filter the records that are returned in the results table. There are filters for Cycles, Categories, Singers, Accompanists, Voices and Instruments. Each Filter has an 'All' option, which means that no filering applies for that column. The other options in the filter list boxes are all the values for that column in the database. If one is selected, then ONLY records that match that filter will be shown in the result table.

You may use as many of the filters as you want, though each filter that you use is likely to reduce the number of performances you see in the results table, since performances must match ALL the filters to be included. It is easy to select a combination of filters that will return no results (it will probably be no surprise to discover that there are no performances by Hans Hotter with guitar accompaniment!).

Columns which are filtered are not shown in the results table (there would be no point, as every row would have the same value). Since the voice of a singer is known, if you filter on Singer, the voice column will also not be shown in the results table. If you filter on a cycle, then you will only see the timings for tracks that apply to that cycle.

Sort sequences

There are 3 list boxes with associated radio buttons to select the sort sequence for the records that are returned in the results table. The sort selections are applied in priority order (top to bottom), and each can be sorted in either ascending or descending order.

There is, of course, no point in sorting on a column that you have filtered (since all the records shown will have the same value). Similarly, there is no point on sorting on the same column twice! However, neither of these options will 'break' the sorting, so there is no need to change the sort options every time you change the filters.

The records in the results table are actually sorted on an underlying key value, which may not be exactly what is shown in the filter list boxes and the results table. For those columns that can be abbreviated (cycle, category, voice and instrument) the sort values are the abbreviations (which are the database keys). For Singers and Accompanists, the sort is on an internal 'Short Name' which is not visible to you. This produces a sort sequence that is very close to alphabetic order of the surname followed by initials, but may not be precisely that sequence when the surname is particularly long. Performances without singers or accompanists are sorted at the end of the alphabetic sort.